A police cruiser sat in the center divider on Valencia Street Thursday morning, observing but not interfering with protesters displaying images of fetuses and calling out to clients at a Planned Parenthood center—despite the fact that they were standing inside a yellow circle painted on the ground that, until recently, kept them at a distance.

Since the Supreme Court’s McCullen decision, which struck down Massachusetts’ 35-foot buffer zone around abortion providers, the Valencia clinic’s yellow border line is no longer keeping protesters from inching closer to the door. But there is no clear verdict yet on whether San Francisco’s clinics will lose their spatial safeguard.

The Planned Parenthood center has now played unwilling host not only to anti-abortion protestors, but to counter-protesters as well. A group of fewer than 10 who came to show their support for Planned Parenthood and the buffer zone on Thursday wanted to symbolically oppose the message of anti-abortion demonstrators. The vocal exchanges between the two camps attracted a police presence on Thursday, but witnesses said no arrests were made.

Dema Grim, who owns the clothing store Dema on Valencia, organized the counter-protest. She said the idea was to use bizarre and abstract messages (“Pro-Dog” and “Yay Unicorns”) to call attention to the absurdity of the anti-abortion action. Grim said Planned Parenthood generally disapproves of any street activism outside its doors, so she will not be organizing another one, but added that she is showing her support by signing the organization’s online petition.

“This is evolving, and we’re trying to figure out how it is we’re going to protect staff and clients moving forward,” said Adrienne Bousian, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood’s regional branch.

Planned Parenthood representatives have urged all its supporters to put pressure on officials to enforce the city’s fairly new buffer zone ordinances. San Francisco has mandated an eight-foot no-protest bubble around clinics since 1993, but the Board of Supervisors increased that distance to 25 feet last year.

According to Jason McDaniel, assistant professor of law at San Francisco State University, last year’s shift in the law could help separate the local ordinance from the Supreme Court’s decision. In McCullen, the court ruled that Massachusetts lawmakers hadn’t exhausted all their options before implementing their 35-foot measure—San Francisco lawmakers had tried eight feet, but found it insufficient. Nonetheless, enforcement seems to have ceased.

Last week, the president and CEO of the regional Planned Parenthood branch sent a heated letter to City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who would advise the Board of Supervisors and SFPD about the legality of San Francisco’s buffer zone enforcement. The letter accused Herrera’s office of inaction and allowing a “dangerous and intolerable situation to materialize.”

While the city attorney’s office has a track record of supporting buffer zones around clinics that provide abortion, it’s being perceived as cautious: Enforcing San Francisco’s law could potentially set the city up for future legal challenges.

In a letter responding to Planned Parenthood’s complaint, the city attorney said he has been actively working with city organizers and Planned Parenthood staff.

“I am not unaccustomed to the awkward role of having to confidentially advise my clients about the risks of their enforcement efforts in the midst of a shifting legal landscape, and then respond with silence about the nature of that advice to members of the public,” Herrera wrote. His letter also called attention to the amicus brief his office and other municipalities filed in support of buffer zones when the Massachusetts case went before the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, outside the Valencia Street Planned Parenthood, anti-abortion demonstrators say that the buffer zone is already a thing of the past.

“Do what is right and don’t kill your baby,” protester Erika Hathaway called out to a woman leaving the clinic, while she was well within the 25-foot boundary. She said buffer zones have been invalidated around the country by the McCullen decision.

“The Supreme Court blew everything out of the water,” said Hathaway, a fixture among the Valencia clinic demonstrators. She said the Supreme Court’s decision reflects a commitment to free speech.

Hadar Aviram, a professor at UC Hastings College of the Law, said the Supreme Court’s decision is vague on whether San Francisco’s ordinance is immediately invalidated or not, since the city buffer mandates only a 25-foot distance, not the 35-foot one struck down by the court. San Francisco’s earlier and smaller “bubble zone” ordinance of eight feet might also still be valid, but Aviram noted that it’s difficult to say where the decision lands in terms of exact distances.

The Valencia clinic, however, is particularly difficult to defend, due to its position on a main thoroughfare, and location on the ground floor. Even if protesters were to keep outside the painted line, clients would still need to pass them—the boundary runs across the sidewalk leading to the entrance.

Aviram said it’s possible the Supreme Court decided in the protesters’ favor in the Massachusetts case because anti-abortion protests have become, overall, less violent.

Elizabeth Creely, a Mission resident who had her first legal abortion in 1984, disagreed, and is concerned her efforts to defend access to abortion have been in vain.

“Violence probably ebbs and flows like a lot of things, but I wouldn’t say it’s a thing of the past,” Creely said. “Walking into a clinic and have someone shove a picture in your face and have someone call you a murderer…That is violence.”

Aviram and Creely suggested that if the law indeed proves unenforceable, Planned Parenthood and citizens may have to take matters into their own hands and shelter clients from protesters. Possibilities they mentioned included police or volunteer escorts, counter-protests or education programs, or putting physical barriers in place.

For now, while the city’s ordinance remains unchallenged in court, its fate is uncertain.

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32 Comments

The 25-foot zone needs to be subjected to a legal challenge before it is declared invalid due to the recent SCOTUS decision. That has not happened: Gabe Zitrin, of the City Attorney’s office confirmed-in a phone call with me- that the 25-foot buffer is legal.

Also: violence at the clinic. All one needs to do is peruse any anti-choice website for a few moments before coming face to face with intensely murderous sentiment aimed not just at doctors, but patients.

It doesn’t matter that this group, led by Mr. Foti, is nominally associated with the Catholic Church- they tend to have connections to many anti-choice organizations which don’t work within the “seamless garment” Catholic framework.

Why is the city willing to gamble the staff person’s lives that something won’t happen? More importantly why is the city, which has done so much to protect and promote women’s health, using the threat of a lawsuit to excuse their inaction? (to be even more clear: I don’t care if that lawsuit materializes or not. I insist they do everything in their power to enforce the laws on the books.)

Call Gabe Zitrin at the City Attorney’s office at (415) 554‐4653. Demand that pressure is put on SFPD Chief of Police Greg Suhr to enforce the ordinance.

Your reply has many lies imbedded in it. First of all, we need police protection with all of the violent passerby residents (damaging our signs, yelling in our faces, threatening our lives). I’m glad there is presently a police presence to protect us from these citizens! I thought liberals are supposed to be open-minded, loving, “live & let live”? I guess I was wrong!
Secondly, the law on the books is this: no intimidation, no blocking. We do neither of these things, otherwise we would have been arrested long ago. God knows PP calls the police constantly about the music, because there is nothing else to call them about!
Thirdly, we don’t shove pictures in people’s faces. The pictures are mounted on poles or on a truck.
Additionally, please don’t mention the Catholic Church in your replies. You don’t speak for the Catholic Church. Your comment was nauseating.
Lastly, and this is addressed to Mission Local: PP does not need to be defended, the 10-20 babies they kill per week need to be defended!! Our voices and our concern for the babies and the mothers (who will be deeply wounded if they decide to abort their baby) need to be defended.

As the Planned Parenthood is besieged, so goes the comments field.
Mission Local, shalI I quote your comments policy? “WE WILL ACCEPT ONLY ONE COMMENT AND ONE REPLY PER POST. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO CHAT FURTHER WITH COMMENTERS, PLEASE EXCHANGE E-MAILS.
That would cut down substantially on Foti’s posts, Hathaways, mine and two of “My takes” (if memory serves.)
Erica, so happy I made you nauseous. The least I can do after your performance last week is return the favor.

Actually, I know someone who can speak for Catholics: Catholics for Choice! Here’s a joint Declaration of Pro-choice principles they worked out with Ipas, a international women’s health provider in the UK.

***
London Declaration of Prochoice Principles

In September 2012, Jon O’Brien of Catholics for Choice and Ann Furedi of the UK abortion provider bpas convened an international meeting of abortion providers, advocates and academics at Chandos House in London to talk about what it means to be prochoice.

The statement from the meeting is being discussed in the prochoice community around the world to foster reflection, conversation and our understanding of what it means to support choice.

We believe in a woman’s autonomy and her right to choose whether to continue or end a pregnancy. Every woman should have the right to decide the future of her pregnancy according to her conscience, whatever her reasons or circumstances. A just society does not compel women to continue an undesired pregnancy.

We recognize that support for choice in itself is not enough. Access to abortion is an integral part of women’s reproductive health care, and we believe in the right to receive this. Women need access to resources and services, including the counsel of the professionals, friends and family they choose to involve. Legal, political, social and economic changes are necessary to allow the exercise of reproductive choice, and a commitment to such changes is part of a commitment to choice.

We express solidarity with those who provide abortion care, and we recognize the moral value of their work. We recognize and respect that some health care personnel may choose not to provide abortions, but we believe it is ethically imperative for them to ensure that a woman receives a referral to a willing provider.

We believe there is a profound moral case for freedom of reproductive choice. We are committed to explaining why abortions are necessary and why women are competent to make decisions and act on them responsibly.

To be prochoice is to be committed to the right of women to make their own reproductive decisions and to:

Strive to create the conditions in which reproductive choice may be exercised.
Support reproductive autonomy.
Advocate for legal frameworks that allow autonomous decision-making.
Educate the public and policymakers globally about the value of reproductive autonomy.

Women are the only ones who can make the right decision for themselves. This is the very essence of what it means to be prochoice.

The couple of images on the vehicles in the photo accompanying this story are nothing like what I saw at Planned Parenthood last Saturday.

When I went by there, there were multiple HUGE cardboard signs with gruesome images of bloody fetuses all over the place right in front of the building, and were obviously there to HARASS, not to inform.

Today at Planed Parenthood, I was thinking of the continuous holocaust of pre-born babies that are slaughtered by the diabolical act of abortion. In this country alone, we routinely murder surgically four thousand babies a day, not counting the chemical abortion, the pill.
I have always believed that abortion was a sacrifice to Satan, and that before he officially takes over a country, he demands child sacrifice. I hate to say this but by the direction our country has gone, we are definitely under his diabolical domain!
Throughout history, it has been written that the demon of child sacrifice has appeared in many forms and cultures. The Phoenician, Carthaginian, Canaanite, Celtic, Indian, Aztec and others practiced child sacrifice, a form of their religion.
Father Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, has confirmed this by the connection of child sacrifice by abortion to a ritual sacrifice to Satan in an article that he wrote on this ancient rite!
“The abortion industry is our modem-day Valley of Slaughter, where abortionists offer ritual blood sacrifices to the ancient demon of child murder. Their work is in every way the key ritual of a demonic religion. Yes, a religion: Abortion has an infallible dogma [“choice”], a ruling hierarchy [Planned Parenthood], theologians [feminist ideologues], a sacrificing priesthood [abortionists], temples [abortion mills], altars of sacrifice [surgical tables], ritual victims [babies and also women], acolytes and sacristans [clinic workers and technicians], guardian angels [police and death –scorts], congregations [leftist foundations and private supporters], its grace [MONEY] that makes everything work.”
Lastly, I hope that after everyone who reads this article will never forget that every abortion, surgically or chemically, is not just a physical act but a spiritual act to Satan!

God is a Holy God. Even in the Lord’s prayer it says that his very name is Holy. “Our Father, Holy is your name….” let us not ever forget that His standard is holiness. The fear of the Lord is to be fearful that we have offended a holy God. If you want blessings from the Lord then remember his holiness. he is thrice Holy. Father, Son & Holy Spirit. David the psalmist wrote in Psalms 96:9 “Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness”… There is more to life than what we see here on this earth. This life is but a shadow of the life to come….. The real life will come when Jesus returns & he is coming. the question is will you fall under Him or fall on Him. In this life you can fall on Him & be broken hearted & repent of your sinful ways & wickedness or you can refuse goodness & fall under Him & be ground to powder. Christ says in the book of Mathew 21:4 “And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder”. May the Lord have mercy on all those who seek after Him…

My anachronistic response was intentional. When Latin was a living language, they recognized that a baby was a baby inside, or outside the womb. All the unborn baby needs is nutrition & time and it develop & grow, will eventually be born & become an adult. It goes against natural law to kill. This is why women suffer so much from aborting their children.
Have your read: The Sacred and the Profane, by Mircea Eliade? We are meant to be spiritual beings you know…

I would die. But of course she would have the right to choose at that point because it is a necessity that someone dies. I think it’s important to try to listen, not just try to win an argument.
Shema, Israel!!!

The Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby which means that they no longer are threaten by the federal government to pay for contraception. But, why the rest of us Americans are forced to pay “taxes” that fund contraception or abortion through foreign aid and through the funding of Planned Parenthood by federal aid.
Did you know that your tax dollars, from your hard working labor, goes to an organization, Planned Parenthood, that has increased their net revenue by 5% to the total of $1.21 billion in its organizational fiscal year ending on June 30, 2013, according to its new Annual Report 2012–2013, and about forty–five percent of that revenue, 540.6 million, was provided by taxpayer–funded government health services grants.
Planned Parenthood is the biggest abortion and contraceptive provider in the United States and also circulates “sex–education” literature that encourages outright perversion. One of their counselors was “counseling” youngsters on the joys of sadomasochistic sex!
Then, there are arguments why someone against war and capital punishment has to pay for that. Well, governing powers of a society have always have had the right to protect their citizens from unjust invaders, by war and from capital crimes, by capital punishment. This I consider a moral obligation that a government owns to its people they governen.
Now, abortion, contraception, embryo cell research, cloning, and embryo implantation are moral issues that are condemned by God and the Catholic Church.
Lastly, why should the members of the Catholic Church is deprived of a tax exemption for issues that are against their conscience?

I read your article this Sunday: “Planned Parenthood gripes about S.F. protesters”
which I think was one of the most one sided article that I have ever read.
What I cannot understand is why you neglected to give the pro-lifer’s side of
their “true” conduct at the abortion clinic. It certainly does not coincide with chapter leader,
Heather Saunders Estes’s version. Really, don’t you want both sides of the story of what
truly is taking place at Planned Parenthood?
First, there is absolutely no harassment and intimidation going on at Planned
Parenthood. The city’s ordinances are not being violated. This is why the San Francisco
Police department has not pressed charges against the pro-lifers.
I think you should also know that Planned Parenthood has video cameras on both sides of
their building, so if their were any kind of violations against the city’s ordinance by the pro-lifers,
they would be able to get the police to press charges against them. So much for their truth.
Aside from Planned Parenthood’s lies, I would like to give you an overview, highlights
of the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision on the unconstitutionality of the 35 feet buffer zone
in Massachusetts’s law banning pro-lifers of a reasonable right to free speech.
This could be the beginning of another look at buffer zones regardless of any size, bubble
zones, 7 or 8 feet laws restricting pro-lifers from exercising their lawful right of free speech.
The court declared that there are already laws that are less restrictive of protecting
women from harassment. There are criminal laws and civil injunctions barring harassment of patients
and abstruction of clinics. So, why all the increase of these unnecessary laws that are only a continuously
chipping away of or constitutional right of lawful free speech?
The anti-life movement has invented two ways to destroy the right to our constitutional right
to free speech! The first were criminal laws and civil injunctions, which were to protect women from
harassment and obstructing a women from entering the clinic. These were sufficient to prevent these
violations to occur. But, the anti-life movement decided to go after free speech directly by using bubble
zones first. Then they invented buffer zones that would make it very difficult to communicate with patients.
In others words, their real target was free speech!
Justice Scalia statement that the goal of such is “protecting citizens” and their supposed right to avoid
speech that they would rather not hear. Another statement from Mark Rienze, lead counsel for
McCullen was that the government cannot reserve its public sidewalks for Planned Parenthood,
as if their message is the only one that women should be allowed to hear!
Justice John Roberts said the plaintiffs who challenged the law “are not protesters,”
but merely to express their opposition to abortion, but to inform women of various alternatives
through personal, caring, consensual conversations. He also said that it deprives them of “their two
primary methods of communicating with arriving patients: close, personal conversations and distribution
of literature.”
Lastly, I personal am looking forward to challenging the 25 feet buffer zone at Planned
Parenthood on Valencia Street in San Francisco or any other unnecessary laws infringing against
Free speech!

When I am at Mass, it seems that most of the readings, and gospels, that are chosen every Sunday and week days, are about the marginalized, poverty, starvation, and the suffering throughout the world. Then the priest brings out the needs of the people living in these terrible conditions, and that it is our duty as practicing Catholics, to help our neighbors in need. Yes, I do agree 100% on truly loving our neighbors in need by action and deed! But, this is only treating the symptoms and not the root causes of the ills of our Secular Society that has transformed our once God centered society into a Godless atheistic society!
What is the root cause of this spiritual sick society that is causing poverty starvation, suffering, and endless wars? One word, Sin!
Our sermons on Sundays or week days should be balanced with speaking about the root causes of sin! Their sermons should not be “obsessed” with speaking about the “symptoms,” the fruits of sin, but, they should be speaking about the “root causes” to end it.
Some of the causes are abortion, birth control, homosexuality, divorce, pornographer, and our corrupt entertainment that is provided by our media, television, and movies. This should be highlighted in their sermons!
Lastly, our society has definitely lost the sense of sin and the belief that there is a God, a devil, a heaven, a hell, and a final judgment, heaven or hell!

Your tax dollars support Planned Parenthood which promotes abortion, permissive sex education, homosexuality, family destruction, pornography, school based linked sex clinics, death inducing chemicals and devices, and population control. Planned Parenthood’s real goals are the following:

{1} About women and abortion:
A 1984 ad campaign for Planned Parenthood Federation of America: “If you agree that every child should be loved, shouldn’t you support a women’s right to abortion?” In other words, if a woman feels that her unborn baby will not be loved, be merciful and kill it!
{2} About chastity:
Fay Wattleton, President, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 10/17/86, L. A, Times: “We are not going to be an organization promoting celibacy or chastity.” In other words, let it be a society of decadence and corruption.
{3} Parental attack!
Dallas Observer, ad placed by Planned Parenthood, 1/30/86: “If your parents are stupid enough to deny you access to birth control, and you are under 18 years old, you can get it on your own. Call Planned Parenthood.” In other words, let Planned Parenthood undermine and attack parental authority.
{4} About large families:
Margaret Sanger, foundress of Planned Parenthood, 1923: “The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” In other words, for Margaret Sanger, it is justified to kill and innocent baby because of the threat of poverty and difficult times!
{5} About race genocide:
Lastly, Margaret Sanger praised Nazi theories of race superiority and set out to eliminate the human waste, the Blacks and Hispanics. “In other words, certain people have a right to exist and others do not”!

I would like to write down two statements that were made by Justice Scalia,
that were spot on, after the radical 35 foot buffer zone was struck down by the
United States Supreme Court.
First: Justice Scalia stated, “protecting people from speech that they
do not want to hear is not a function that the First Amendment allows the government
to undertake in the public streets and sidewalks.”
Second: Justice Scalia then suggested that the Hill bubble zone ordinance should
be overruled, in Colorado, based on how the court ruled in the McCullen case.
This has caused leading attorneys to question whether the bubble zone
ordinance is constitutional in the wake of McCullen, and it is why Michael May,
the city attorney in Madison, Wis., decided to stop enforcing his city’s bubble
zone ordinance.
Lastly, Justice Scalia stated that there are already laws that will protect women
who go to an abortion clinic from harassment, intimidation, and obstruction. These are
civil injunctions and criminal laws that will certainly do the job.
The bubble zones and buffer zones were created to eliminate free speech and
to gradually prevent people to use the streets and sidewalks as a podium of free speech!
So, all buffer zones of any size and bubbles zones should be challenged at
all cost!

Life is life no matter how it got here. To destroy that life is to deny that a living person has a right to reach their God given destiny. Those pictures that are displayed by the protesters are gross. But, they tell the truth. It shows what an aborted baby looks like. If people don’t like those pictures it may be because it hurts their consciences. Aborting babies is inherently wrong & it should grieve their conscience. Perhaps the women going to Planned Parenthood will re-examine their minds before going in to commit abortion. People should stand up for what is right & make a stand against what is wrong in this world today. If people don’t say that it is wrong to kill an unborn baby, what kind of society will we become. Where death is the culture instead of life. Didn’t Scott Peterson get sentenced to death row for 2 murders. First degree murder for killing his wife Laci & second degree murder for the life of their unborn child. Everyone applauded his conviction & sentencing & I heard no one dissenting the part about the conviction of the murder of his unborn son.
What kind of a society are we where we think it is ok to kill a baby in the womb as long as the mother agrees to it; but when it is done at the hand of the father it is called murder. if we don’t change as a society & recognize that the unborn have a right to life too, then we may regress to the point where the man can demand an abortion on his partner & the state will enforce it. To quote Mother Teresa. “It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.”
Basically that is what it is all about here in one simple quote. I have told many people myself “why are you looking to an abortion clinic to bless your life? When you haven’t tried using faith & calling out to the creator of the universe to bless you & help you to raise that life that you just helped to create”. God can bless you if you ask. Asking & expecting an abortionist to kill your baby & to think that there is a blessing in it is ludicrous. Planned Parenthood cannot bless you. They can only bring a curse on you & your baby.
Did anyone think about marriage here? Yes get married. Settle down & stop sowing your wild oats. Have a family. I see so many today that want & even adopt kids because they can’t have any of their own. They just want the love of a child in their life. Those little arms wrapped around their neck & to hear that little one say I Love You. There is joy in it that is unimaginable
Peace to all who read my post.
Stephen Long a Pro-Life person
You can respond it you wish tolongstephen@hotmail.com

It still bothers their conscience to kill their unborn baby. Otherwise there would be no dissent. People want to continue in their wrongdoing without anyone arousing the conscience. Which they do have. But if you do it enough you will deaden the conscience or (sear it if you will) enough that you can do anything without feeling any remorse at all. Turn to God , ask for forgiveness repent from your evil ways. Our God is a loving God & will forgive & heal the inner person. God can restore what has been seared.. God wants relationship with the sinner. God wants to commune with the inner man/woman. Look to God for your blessings not Abortionists. They cannot help you. It will only hurt you psychologically & emotionally for a lifetime. Women do regret abortion but no woman has ever regretted having a baby.

I have been reading Stephen Long’s comments that I think is the best advise for you baby killers. But, I feel that most of you will ignore his loving, caring, and good advise and go on your diabolical path to hell.
My advise to all you hateful baby killers is more direct and to the point! Obey God’s laws or burn in hell.

The pill!
Contraception is a direct act against God and the Natural Law.
An old Christian adage states that God always forgives the repentant sinner, human beings sometimes forgive, but {Mother} Nature never forgives [the violations of its laws}.

Question No. One: Did you ever expect F.D.A. to lift the age to 12 years old?
{A}Yes, because if they could approve the R U 486 Pill that has killed 15 women in the U. S. and many more worldwide and injured thousands, any thing is possible with F.D.A.!

Question No. Two: What do you know and how do you feel about the plan B pill?
{A} Plan B pill is a chemical abortion. It allows conception but prevents implantation.
{B} It causes breast cancer and many others problems.
{C} Research has been done on this extensively by researcher Joel Brind PhD and Janet Daling, Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Question No. Three: Do you believe that over the counter Plan B. will cause trouble for the youth?
{A} Yes, it will certainly cause younger youth to become sexual active that would not have become sexual active if were not made available for them.
{B} It will cause the increase of sexual transmitter deceases.
{C} It will cause more unwanted pregnancy and will automatically increase abortions.

Breast Cancer Links:
{A} Breast cancer link to induced abortion has been documented by 27 out of 34 worldwide studies publish since 1957.
{B} 13 out of 14 American studies have linked induced abortion with breast cancer
{C} In the U.S. more than 175,000 women are diagnose with breast cancer.
{B} In the U.S. more than 43,000 women die of breast cancer every year.